


Nightshade

by tiamatv



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fluff in the Men of Letters Bunker (Supernatural), Love Potion/Spell, M/M, POV Sam Winchester, Sam Winchester is So Done, Sassy Rowena MacLeod, Surprise Kissing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-30
Updated: 2020-09-30
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:40:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,111
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26723053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tiamatv/pseuds/tiamatv
Summary: “You…” Sam’s mouth moved in silent shock before he finally gritted out, “You fed Dean acursed aphrodisiac?!”“I did no such thing!” Rowena replied hotly. “T’wasn’t my fault at all. I was simmering a wee little something on the stove, that’s all. Andyour brothercame along when I wasn’t watching and slurped up a whole ladleful!"
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 91
Kudos: 507
Collections: The Destiel Fan Survey Favs Collection





	Nightshade

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pingnova](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pingnova/gifts).



> So here's what I was doing instead of working on any of the other WIPs I should have been working on. Whoops. Completely ridiculous, equally completely unbetaed. Also, I've never written Rowena before, so apologies if I got her wrong! (Absolutely no dubcon. Promise!)
> 
> Ping, Jem, and all of those willing to entertain this silliness on the PB server, this is your doing.

Of all the things Sam Winchester did not expect to see in their kitchen on a Tuesday afternoon in August, number one on the list was this: his big brother backing Castiel up against a kitchen countertop, one hand on Cas’s hip and the other on the back of his neck, both of their eyes closed as they kissed.

Actually, that was a lie. Dean kissing Cas against a countertop was probably number three.

Number one and two would be, respectively, the resurrected and previously unknown Archangel Gargamel eating tacos. And an alien zombie.

Sam still gaped.

Neither Dean, who had spent his life defending himself against things suddenly appearing out of his peripheral vision, nor Cas, who was—the last time any of them had checked—still a fully powered-up Angel of the Lord, seemed to notice that Sam was there or that his jaw had hit the floor.

It wasn’t that Sam hadn’t seen Dean kissing people before—and it wasn’t even that _lurid_ a kiss, as far as kisses went. It was actually bizarrely gentle—tiny movements of lips and chin, little nuzzled pushes—for all that Dean’s hand was clutched hard enough into the back of Cas’s neck that the flesh was dimpling under his fingers—

Wait, why could Sam see Cas’s neck at all?

Then Sam realized that, first of all, Cas wasn’t wearing his beloved coat. It was crumpled on the floor next to the kitchen island. Dean’s flannel was curled in a plaid snail on top of it. Next to it, Dean’s Colt sprawled on the floor with its holster straps tangled. And wasn’t that Cas’s tie…?

Sam looked back up, alarmed.

Oh. Okay. He’d seen the kiss first, and kind of missed the… everything else.

Dean wasn’t wearing a shirt anymore, and Cas’s was open and dangling off one shoulder. If Dean’s jeans were _sagging_ down his hips that meant that they were open and hah hah oh _holy shit_.

Wait, one of Cas’s hands was clutching into Dean’s hair, but where was the _other—_

 _“Mmph_ ,” Dean commented, and lifted his head away. His lips were swollen. So were Cas’s. The sound of both of them panting was almost louder than the incessant whir of the air filters. “Grabby,” he muttered, but he had a remarkably joyful grin stretching his lips. He opened his eyes, but he still didn't look away from Cas's. He was looking at their best friend like a bakery case of freshly-made, steaming apple pies. “Didn’t see that one coming.”

“You can hardly blame me. It is a _very_ nice handful,” Cas agreed, and he stuck his left hand further down the back of Dean’s jeans.

Dean _groaned_.

Sam backed so quickly out of the kitchen that he wasn’t sure _how_ he ended up in the atrium, looking around him frantically like the world had just rewound. Maybe it had. Fast forwarded? That hadn’t really happened, had he? Had he been having _visions?_ (Oh, no. Not again.)

He knocked into a standing lamp, and steadied it—sort of, mostly he ended up dancing around with it, and barely managed to keep from taking himself down with its cord. He stared down at it suspiciously and stepped out from the entangling coil of electric cord snaking around his ankles.

Okay, he’d never done anything like _that_ in visions…

“Oh, _Sam_! I should’ve warned you not to go in there.” Rowena exclaimed, and Sam jumped. “Oh, you poor dear. Were you very traumatized?” she crooned. “There, there.”

“Rowena!” he barked, then stopped, his eyes narrowing. “What?”

The acknowledgment that what was going on in the kitchen was real made Sam feel significantly less panicky. Well, at least he wasn’t crazy. Or at least any crazier than anyone else around here.

She blinked, slowly, and smoothed a curl of her hair away from her face before reaching for a teacup in front of her with both hands. “They did turn the stove off, didn’t they? No-one’s on fire? Literally on fire, I mean. Not metaphorically.”

Sam looked back at the open doorway, then at the witch sitting at one of the Vault’s long tables. He’d known she was here, of course—she’d arrived this morning in a rush of silk scarves and a suitcase covered with a design of large, extravagant roses. She was leaning back with her ankles crossed underneath her, a book larger than her torso open on the table in front of her, and she was currently sipping what smelled like a fruity, fragrant Earl Grey tea with milk out of a delicate porcelain teacup.

Definitely not a vision.

Except as far as Sam was aware, they didn’t have Earl Grey in the bunker. Or porcelain teacups. Or _milk_ , since Dean was supposed to be at the grocery store right now, refilling the pantry staples.

“I _do_ hope one of the silly billies remembered to turn the gas off before they got up to shenanigans,” Rowena murmured, as if to herself, before putting her teacup down and flipping a page of the book spread out across the table a dramatic flutter of heavy vellum page, and an equally dramatic sigh. “Though I suppose there isn’t anything in that oh-so-industrial kitchen that’s likely to be flammable other than they themselves. The tomatoes will make a _terrible_ smell if they burn, though.”

Not a vision. Was this a dream? Sam pinched himself, delicately. No, not a dream. And too bewildering and discordant to be something to do with djinn.

Also. Tomatoes?

“Rowena…” he warned. There were only so many conclusions that Sam could come to here—since Dean pulling his head out of his ass and actually acknowledging that Castiel, Angel of the Lord, had been giving him soft looks for the past decade wasn’t even a plausible option. “Rowena, what did you _do_?”

She pouted at him. “What makes you think I did _anything_ , Samuel?” she asked, archly. “Couldn’t this just be their natural inclinations coming to the fore?” She sat up straight and swirled both wrists in the air in a twisting swoosh that, if the world had any sense, likely should have come with a trailer of purple sparklers. “Two lonely hearts meeting in the right place at the right time?”

“Oh, _right_. That statement’s worthy of Cas’s damned air quotes,” Sam answered, with a snort.

He didn’t know if it was sad, embarrassing, or just _annoying_ that Rowena didn’t deny that.

“ _Hmph,_ ” she answered, and let herself relax down. She scooped up her tea again with both hands, and huffed, sending bergamot wafting through the space. “T’was your brother’s own doing, I’ll have you know,” she told him, flicking both her eyebrows upwards the way Jo had flipped knives. “Would _you_ consume a cursed aphrodisiac bubbling on the stove, let me ask you? Because it seems that Dean doesn’t have the sense that God gave _parsnips_!”

Sam bit down on the—accurate, but probably extremely unhelpful—observation that they’d both _met_ God, and Chuck totally was nonsensical enough to give parsnips a lot of common sense.

Then he bit down even harder on the question about why the hell Rowena had been making a cursed aphrodisiac in the first place. She might actually answer him.

“You…” Sam’s mouth moved in silent shock before he finally gritted out, “You fed _Dean_ a…”

“I did no such thing!” she replied hotly. “T’wasn’t _my_ fault at all. I was simmering a wee little something on the stove, that’s all. And that brother of yours came along when I wasn’t watching and slurped up a whole ladleful! I _caught_ him at it, too!” She scowled, and crossed her arms petulantly. “From the stain on his shirt, wasn’t the first one he’d nicked, either.”

Sam wiped a hand over his face. Then did it again when the world didn’t twist or evaporate around him. “Oh, God,” he sighed. That was so terribly, _horribly_ like something Dean would do. “I… okay, so… Dean… oh, _God_. You _cursed_ him?! Rowena—”

Dean hadn’t looked like he was all that pissed about that curse _now,_ from what Sam had seen—but Sam was going to have to lock down all the witch-killing bullets before they broke it.

“He cursed _himself,_ I would say.” Rowena shrugged, and tossed her hair over her shoulder. “It’s his damned own fault for tasting something on the stove that he didn’t put there himself, no matter _how_ delicious it smells.” She clicked her tongue, meaningfully. “ _Rude_.”

That was true. However, in Sam’s entire lifetime, he didn’t think he’d met one person who expected Dean’s manners to be anything but abysmal. Their own _mother_ was appalled by them.

(Also, he guiltily admitted to himself that he’d sort of followed the savory, rich smell of cooking tomatoes into the kitchen, himself.)

“Okay, okay.” Sam wiped a hand over his face. “So, um. Cursed aphrodisiac. Wow. _Okay._ ” It could be worse. Probably. Maybe? “Is there an… an antidote?”

“I told Dean ‘no.’” She shrugged. “He'll stay in his right mind. Where's the fun, otherwise? Just has to get it out of his system, is all.”

“ _No?_ ” Sam felt his teeth click together, the back of his tongue sour and bitter. “Oh. Oh, _shit_. Is that why Dean and Cas are…”

“Canoodling? Most likely.” Rowena flipped another page on her book, looking unconcerned. “You know how these things go—it’s always the dangler. Why’s it always the dangler, I ask you? You’d think men would be as worried about their noses and fingers or their livers, but no, threaten their cock and they’ll give you whatever your heart or your pocketbook desires.”

There were so many things that were both wrong with that statement, and also _true_. Crowley had sold his _soul_ for—Sam didn’t want to think of that, either. “ _Rowena,_ ” Sam said, and he heard the warning timbre rattling in his own voice.

“Alright, alright, keep your clothes on.” She grinned toothily at her own cleverness. Sam didn’t smile back. “I _might’ve_ told Dean his wee dangler was gonna fall off if he didn’t…” she tapped on her chin “…fill the endless well of his deepest and most secret desires, and all that. These things always come with such verbiage.” She clucked her tongue, shaking her head. “You know, I expected him to have to _think_ about it for more than a shake of a puppy dog’s tail? Most people do.” A soft, only slightly sarcastic noise puffed from the corner of her mouth. “Then that wee sweet angel wandered in, said ‘something smells good,’ and Dean just reached out and… yoink! Right by the tie, too! Didn’t even have to fumble for it.”

Rowena sounded mildly impressed by that.

It was disconcerting just how _well_ Sam could imagine it.

But he blinked. “Um… did _Cas_ eat any of the stuff?”

“Wouldna have had the time, would he?” Rowena asked, archly. “Unless he’s been sneakin’ sips, and that just doesn’t seem very angelic. He’s more mannerly than that.”

Castiel also, in general, didn’t have much interest in food anymore unless Dean was actively trying to feed it to him. Besides, would an aphrodisiac—cursed or witchy or not—even work on him? Sam wasn’t ruling that out, but he also had enough sense left to him to not ask that question of Rowena aloud.

She’d take it as a challenge.

Sam folded himself into a chair, wincing and resting his face, very briefly, in his hands. Dean and Cas were going to be so completely _unbearable_ about avoiding each other after this, once Dean was back to his own mind. He could already see it. Cas was going to reach out. Dean was going to slap his hand away and make some kind of ridiculous excuse. And then Sam was going to have to hide the whiskey along with the witch-killing bullets. “Okay, so…” he sighed into his palms before raising his head. It could be worse. No-one was going to die. And no-one’s… dangler was… that was such a _terrible term._ No. “What do we _do_?”

“I don’t rightly see as how there is anything to do, Samuel, other than let them wear themselves out,” Rowena told him, archly, and toasted him with her teacup. “I admit, I didn’t expect _this_ outcome, but… here is to the power of the mighty tomato.”

“The… tomato,” Sam repeated, flat. She’d said that earlier, and he’d honestly thought he’d misheard. He wouldn’t have toasted her even if he _had_ had a drink in hand. “You made… _tomato potion._ ”

Her lips parted, eyes widening, theatrical. She gasped aloud. “Why, Samuel. Are you telling me you, a legacy Man of Letters, a _Win_ chester, doesn’t know of the power of the mighty tomato?”

Right.

Rowena frowned at him, her lips pursing outwards in displeasure when Sam sat back in his chair and crossed his arms, staring. Her lipstick never seemed to smudge, he’d noticed. _“_ T’was considered quite the forbidden fruit, you know.” She rolled her eyes, dramatically, blue eyeliner flaring. “First a poison, then an aphrodisiac. So _silly._ There was a time Catholics thought that so much as glimpsing one would make younger members of their congregation succumb to lust. So scarlet! So ripe and succulent! One _glance_ at a soft, fresh-picked summer tomato still warm from the sun could overcome the devout with desire—"

It wasn’t that Sam thought that Rowena went intentionally out of her way to make others froth at the mouth. That said, occasionally, he wondered, considering how many times she had successfully resurrected herself from the dead, if she possessed some obscure witchery that drew power from other people’s frustration.

“All right, all right,” he interrupted, wincing. He didn’t want to hear about _anyone_ ‘devout with desire.’ Not when the current devotee was showing his devotion to an angel in the bunker kitchen. “So you can make tomatoes into sex potion. Great. I get it. How’s it going to affect them?” Or, rather, _Dean…_

Wait. Something ticked at the back of Sam’s brain. He squinted at it, but it wouldn’t focus.

Rowena raised her head and looked at him, then, pointedly, back at the archway leading into the kitchen. Someone back there grunted. Before he could stop himself, Sam dragged his chair a little further away from the entryway, as if that would somehow help.

“You know… until this very moment I thought that you were _possibly_ the second most intelligent person in the bunker,” Rowena drawled.

“Oh, for God’s sakes,” Sam sighed. “You know that’s not what I mean. Is it… otherwise harmful at all?” He frowned as the quirk in the back of his mind came into focus. “Wait. Why is _Cas_ going along with this?”

“Hah!” their resident witch barked. “As if Castiel wouldn’t throw himself on a blade if Dean asked it of him. What Dean’s asking him to throw himself upon today is hopefully a wee bit more pleasant than that.”

Sam blanched. And maybe threw up a little bit in the back of his mind. He had _not_ needed that visual. No-one needed that visual.

Rowena snorted at the look on his face. “Oh, they’ll be just _fine,_ don’t you fret.” She wobbled her head and played with a stray lock of hair. “Well, unless Dean’s got an allergy to marinara sauce.”

Sam closed his eyes. He would have prayed for patience, but he knew better than perhaps anyone in the universe just how _ineffective_ prayer was—and he sure as hell wasn’t praying to Cas right now. “The ingredients for some sort of a cursed love philtre are the same as the ingredients for _tomato sauce?_ Really, Rowena? You expect me to believe that? _Really?”_

Every time Sam Winchester thought his life couldn’t possibly get more strange…

“No, of course I don’t expect you to believe it, don’t be ridiculous,” Rowena sniffed. “Your brother is _unbelievably_ gullible, though. But it’s his own damned fault. I had planned to jar that sauce, but who knows what nasty wee buggies Dean got into it with all his tasting! I suppose we shall just have it for dinner.” She flicked her eyes at the kitchen. “Hmm. When they’re done.”

Sam’s brain, caught in the hurricane eye of damage control, paused.

“What?” he asked, slowly.

Rowena snapped her fingers briskly in front of his face, impatient. “Samuel, _do_ keep up.”

Sam sat and looked at the backs of his fingers, the callused course of his palms, the delicate blue tracery of his veins through his wrists. He studied a scar across the base of his left thumb that, incongruously, had come from the metal piece coming free of the inside of his backpack in fifth grade, rather than from any of the million ways he’d been injured, stabbed, shot, clawed, or simply _died_ since then.

He thought of exasperatingly long looks between his brother and Cas, Dean’s desperation and irritation and snappishness, Cas’s unfaltering, rock-steady devotion. He thought of _profound bonds_ and personal space and prayer.

“There’s… nothing magical about the tomato sauce that you had on the stove, was there,” he finished.

“ _All_ cooking is a form of alchemy,” Rowena told him, haughtily.

Sam didn’t bother to respond to that.

“I admit, I didn’t honestly expect Dean to believe me, but that’s a truly terrible case of lust for you, I suppose.” She shrugged, studying her nails absently before spreading her fingers over her book in a dramatic flick. “I don’t think dear Castiel even heard the explanation, but he seems _very_ eager to help. So here we are!”

It was possible that Sam’s headache was getting worse.

A deep, gravelly grunt echoed in the silence of Sam biting his tongue hard enough to draw blood. Despite himself, he flinched.

“Rowena, I know you did this to teach Dean a lesson about manners,” he began, carefully. It didn’t do to antagonize someone who was as powerful as she was unnecessarily. “And I appreciate you trying. I really do—”

“You’re very welcome, darling boy,” she told him, proudly.

The moan that reverberated across the stone walls, loud even despite distance, was loud, gritty, male, and _undeniably_ delighted.

“— _But_ I don’t think he’s exactly regretting what he did, right now,” he muttered, shaking his head. “Guess I’m going to the store.”

And buying that milk.

And earplugs.

And _disinfectant_. Lots of it.

“Get some more tomatoes, would you, there’s a dear?” Rowena told him, turning to the next page of her book, unbothered by the sound effects that were echoing through the bunker. The really, really, really enthusiastic sound effects. “The last batch seemed _particularly_ good.”

Sam just sighed.

~fin~

**Author's Note:**

> The prompt, from [pingnova](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pingnova/pseuds/pingnova): I guess when tomatoes were introduced to Europe people were wary of them bc they’re nightshades, many of those are poisonous. and even once people started getting over that, tomatoes were considered a damn aphrodisiac. lmFao. 1700s Europe was wild. anyway, Rowena brewing a love potion and tipping Sam’s entire bucket of backyard tomatoes into it, Dean accidentally eats it bc it looks like tomato sauce bubbling on the stove, and that’s how destiel happens.
> 
> My twist, because I can't make anything normal: it's not a love potion. It's just tomato sauce.
> 
> This delightful prompt came from the [Profound Bond Discord Server](https://discord.gg/profoundbond). If you're so inclined to share in the madness, come join us!


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